Category: Life

As I often do, I pulled up the Astronomy Picture of the Day, and noticed today’s photo was a fond reminder of the eclipse I witnessed a month ago. I began to think about the preparation and timing, planning and organizing, the countless hours of testing gear for a single moment lasting two minutes, where the Moon and Sun aligned. I was in the right place, at the right time. Solar Eclipses are rare, and it’s mostly because only a narrow band of land on Earth, usually around 100 Km wide, experiences such an event at any one time. And with...

It was like someone turned down the Sun with a dimmer switch. The tempurate dropped quickly, enhanced by the lack of moisture in the dry mountain air. In a span of an hour, the Sun looked the same, but was very different, as totality approached. I was taking photos through my telescope with an attached solar filter, so I could see the Moon slowly covering the Sun. But as the environment changed in Northern Wyoming, I grew more excited for what was to come. Over a year of preparation for this event, and clear skies greeted me with the confidence...

For 4.5 billion years, life evolved on planet Earth. Not once were the inhabitants of this tiny blue mote of dust able to gaze upon their home as one entity. To them it had always been an endless land without borders and an endless supply of food and resources. Most of them were blissfully unaware that they could ever venture further, and so they accepted the boundaries of their existence unquestionably. Once humans started making tools, we were taken down a path of discovery that would let us escape the bounds of our shrinking world. Finally, just over 70 years...

A tree is a good way to represent a series of decisions. Start at the trunk and move to smaller and smaller branches, each branch tip representing one o the many possibilities. A tree representing a persons life would be immense, far larger than any tree on Earth. There are an incredible number of possibilities that arise due to a persons choices, and every waking moment we move along a path. But there is one stark difference between this tree and a real tree. With the decision tree, you can cross back over to other paths. I started thinking about this...

Most of my motivation posts this year have been about the workout goal I set myself for the year, and for good reason. It has kept me on track, motivating me if no one else. After six months in the gym, I am certainly happy with how I’ve done, but for some reason I expected it to get easier with time. If anything, it’s become more difficult, and so I did something a stubborn perfectionist like myself really hates: I took a week off. My week off meant no gym time, no careful measuring of eating habits, and a later...

After hitting the gym hard this year as my main goal for 2016, I’ve learned a heck of a lot about fitness, nutrition, and motivation. Just over 6 months has passed and I wanted to share some of the things I’ve learned, especially about motivation and the expectation vs reality aspect. When I started the year, my main goal was to be consistent. I went to the gym no matter how I felt. Even if I sat there and stretched or walked on a treadmill, I would consider it a win. With nutrition the goal was to eat cleanly (I’ll...

One of the reasons I love science is that it actually does allow us to look into the past and future, beyond our existence in the present. Written history gives us a perspective of a person who was around before any human currently living on Earth, and allows us to piece together the history of our culture. This is very important, so no disrespect to historians and their work. Much disrespect to fortune telling though. It’s a waste of energy involving a person who fishes for information for a living. But let’s talk about Science. Since we just passed Canada...

After a relatively long hiatus, I am back blogging. I am currently more than 22 posts behind my “post every day” goal, so expect some short and sweet posts to make up the difference. I’m not worried about it, because life gets busy, and we all have other priorities. But I’m glad to be back. A true love of Astronomy and Space will always keep me here, writing about the new and exciting science in a field I have loved my whole life. If you, reading this right now, are the only person who ever reads these words, I hope it adds...

When I was younger, I could get away with pulling an all-nighter, eating like garbage, and never taking a break. As I get older, I find it’s much easier to burn out. I feel the effects of a poor diet or a late night, and I need the extra time to recover at the end of a long week. Over the past few months, I’ve been getting used to waking up at 5am, going to the gym, and then going to work for the day. I watch what I eat, generally avoid alcohol, and enjoy a few cups of delicious coffee...

One of the most important questions our species has tackled is the origin of life on Earth. If we can figure out the conditions and catalyst for the beginning of life, we can look elsewhere in the universe for those same conditions, and zero in on the potential for finding extraterrestrial life. We know the universe is old enough for the painstakingly slow evolutionary process, but what started it? In the famous 1952 Miller-Urey experiment, a flask containing the basic natural elements water (H20), methane (CH4), Ammonia (NH4), and Hydrogen (H2), all present on the early Earth, was subjected to...